Jacket
by Kyo Tetsuei
Summary: Slices from a past, present, and future that could have been.


I don't own Naruto, a quick search on Google (which I would much rather own, if given a choice) will tell you who does.

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**Jacket**

A Naruto fanfiction by Kyo Tetsuei

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A lone figure sat facing the water on the faded guardrail of one of the bridges spanning the main river running through Konoha. The sun was sitting low in the sky, preparing to rest after a hard day's work. The residents of the village, heading home for the night, spared the seated person but a mere glance as they walked by, having long been acclimated to the various eccentricities of their village's ninja. This picturesque scene, one that people would envision in a painting: the darkened silhouette of a girl just beginning the journey to womanhood, framed by the light of the setting sun. A beautiful sight, worthy of any art show centerpiece… 

Then again, some people don't know how to appreciate art.

"SAKURA-CHAN!"

So much for picturesque. A completely soaked kunoichi hauled herself out of the water and back onto the bridge in one leap, and then proceeded to systematically inflict pain upon the boy that had caused her to fall into the river in the first place. Noticing the pedestrians stopping to peer at the situation much like how people start to gather to gawk at a train wreck, she grabs the boy by the ear and drags the protesting orange-clad ninja to a nearby park.

"Naruto," she began as she simultaneously cracked her knuckles for emphasis, "would you like to explain why you startled me like that before I decide to hurt you again?"

One hand nursing the freshly acquired lumps on his head, while the other felt one ear, then compared it with the other – it really did seem like she stretched one of them out. Who's going to listen to a Hokage with mismatched ears, for ramen's sake? – Naruto grumbled a bit, before grinning again at the object of his affection/torment: "I wanted to know if you wanted to go get something to eat!" he gestured at the slowly darkening sky. "It's starting to get late, and I know you haven't eaten dinner yet, you've been sitting on that bridge for hours!"

Arms crossed across her chest in anger, she had never wanted to throttle the boy in front of her more in her life. "And that was a reason to get me soaked, you pervert? Even if I was hungry, and even _if_ I had considered going to get dinner with you, I can't even do that now, dripping wet as I am! Never mind food, are you stalking me? If you are, you'll have more to worry about than two misshaped ears, I'll tell you that right now, Naruto. I don't care how close to you are to Hokage-sama, I'll make sure she gets you put on a genin team that does nothing but D-ranked missions. _Forever._" At this, our hapless hero turned the slightest bit pale…

"I'm not stalking you, Sakura-chan! Honest! I was… I was just worried how you'd be feeling, since the bastard was so mean to you after we were training today. Wait, Sakura-chan, are you shivering? Look, I'm sorry for getting you all wet, here, take my jacket – I don't care if you don't want to wear it, you're going to get sick! – just go home and get dry, all right? I just didn't want to see you moping around all day, that's all…" The boy trailed off, noticing that the girl seemed to finally be listening to him, and that she didn't seem to be nearly as homicidal as she was mere moments ago. She stared at him with an eyebrow raised, seemingly trying to appraise his intent. For all his perverted and annoying tendencies, he seemed to be genuinely concerned about her well-being, and for that, she supposed she could be nice to him as well, as long as it didn't become a regular thing.

"Alright, fine, I'm going home now. No, I don't need you to come with me Naruto, I can find my way home on my own, thank you very much. Sorry to spoil your plans for dinner, but maybe, _maybe, _if you're good, we can get everyone and go get a team lunch tomorrow. How's that sound?" Rewarded with Naruto's trademark million-watt grin, she returned a small smile of her own, and turned to go home, quietly grumbling about the annoyingly orange jacket, and hoping against hope that no one saw her with it, least of all Ino-pig, or she'd really never hear the last of it.

* * *

Having showered and changed, Sakura sat in her room, looking out her window into the now dark and starry sky, gaudy orange jacket forgotten in some corner of the room, to be picked up and returned immediately the following morning at practice. The calm scene out of her window was intermittently disturbed by the occasional Konoha ninja out on either patrol or heading out to or in from a mission. A familiar figure with the only person in the village whose hair resembled what Naruto had once so politely termed "the ass end of a duck" (to no small amount of pain from the girls in the academy class at the time) caught the girl's attention, and she noted with interest the traveling pack in his possession. Without a second thought, she quickly put on her footgear and bounded out the window, following in pursuit, until she was finally able to flag him down in the park walkway that she had been mere hours before…

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Sakura's teary-eyed pleas to bring back Sasuke fell on Naruto's sympathetic ears – he looked so different without the jacket, a small part of her mind noted. He seemed to pay the lack of an outer garment no heed, as he made his declaration: 

"_I'll bring him back, Sakura-chan. That's the promise of a lifetime. That and I'd like my jacket back."_

With that, the five genin tasked with the retrieval mission set out, quickly disappearing out of sight into the trees that surrounded the village.

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An eternity's wait that in actuality lasted a few short hours, five battered Konoha nin and three considerably better off Suna nin appeared at the gates of the town, whereupon they were immediately whisked off to the hospital for treatment and debriefing. The eight were in various stages of well-being, but there were two things that had rang true with all of them: they had all been victorious in their confrontations with the enemy ninja, and more importantly, they were all alive. 

Even with this good news, there were two noted absences: Naruto and Sasuke. As pursued and main pursuer, no news of the two was forthcoming, even from the patrolling squads roaming Konoha territory. Perhaps Naruto had succeeded in detaining Sasuke, and they were on their way back. At least, that's what Sakura's hopeful theories were.

As the hours turned into days, however, with no answer to the mystery in sight, it was beginning to seem like Naruto had failed in his mission. The other theory, one that was vehemently denied as an impossibility by his fellow genin, was that Naruto had followed Sasuke in deserting the village.

As the days passed, however, with still no news or revelations as to the fate of the last member of the original retrieval team or the retrieval target, Sakura's hope clung to the jacket that now hung on the chair in her room, and his promise of a lifetime. Naruto would bring back the erstwhile member of their group, and they'd be together again, ugly jacket and all.

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Two weeks after Sasuke's departure from the village, Sakura sat on the same guardrail she been startled off of what now seemed like ages ago. It was hard for a genin team to take missions nowadays with two of the three people on the team missing, and the jounin instructor out helping pick up the slack after the disastrous chuunin exams. Of the entire rookie nine, she was the only one left in the village with nothing to do, and not being in the mood to train, that left being depressed and moping as the only real way for her to pass the time. The fact that this particular spot gave her a vantage point of the village's main gate was the reason she picked this spot. 

This particular day, alone with her thoughts, Sakura was shocked to find that the images of Team Seven were beginning to fade in her mind. An alarming sense of dread began to fill her entire being as she leaped off of the bridge, rushing as quickly as she could back to her home, where her pictures and souvenirs from various missions were collected. As she reached her windowsill, she froze in her motions. The jacket had disappeared. No one but Naruto had known that she had his jacket. He was back!

Turning, she dashed back towards the village gates, searching for any sign of the two other genin on her squad, and finding none, she checked the hospital, the Hokage tower, and with each location she searched, despair began to once again secure a hold on her heart. Not giving up, she even checked the training grounds where they had taken their bell test. Finding that area empty as well, her heart filled with fear as she turned to rush towards the last place on her list…

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That silly grin was on his face again. "You're here, Sakura-chan! As promised, I brought him back, although he put up one hell of a fight. That's why it took so long, I had to take my sweet time beating some sense into him. You might want to get someone to look at his arms and legs, I told him if I needed to break his arms and legs to bring him back, I would, and I guess I needed to do that after all. Me, I couldn't be better. I've got my jacket back now, and I've fulfilled my promise of a lifetime. Remember when I said I'd get my name on this hero monument? It looks like I'm going to get that too, so I couldn't be happier. The only thing that I don't think I'll be able to do is have that lunch with Kakashi-sensei, the bastard, and Sakura-chan… I'm sorry…" 

She saw his figure become blurred because of the rapidly filling tears in her eyes, and what she saw after she clenched her eyes shut to rub away the tears made her fall to her knees. Naruto had disappeared, jacket draped over the top of the huge black memorial stone, with a broken and bloodied Uchiha Sasuke lying unconscious at its base, a familiar blue headband with two glinting metal pieces hanging by their fasteners to the headband – the broken remains of Naruto's forehead protector.

* * *

A lone figure sat on the freshly-painted guardrail of one of the bridges spanning the main river running through Konoha. One of the fresh genin-teams had painted this bridge the week before as one of their many D-ranked missions they would have to endure. The sun had not quite come up in the sky yet, but the light of the dawn had begun to beat back the darkness of the night. The person, looking in the opposite direction of the sunrise, watched as the dark navy cover of night began to gradually turn to the bright vivid blue of the start of the day. Sighing, Haruno Sakura stood up on the guard rail, lifted her arms to securely fasten the forehead protector on her head, and with a flourish, turned towards the rising sun as she put on her bright, gaudy, completely unfashionable orange jacket. Smiling beautifully, she hopped off the bridge, and headed towards her office. 

"I hope you're alright with it, Naruto. I've taken your dream, and made it into my reality. Somehow, I think that's what you would have wanted."

Somehow, she knew that was alright.

**FINI**

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I've got an unhealthy obsession with this particular part of the Naruto timeline. I realize that I should be writing the next chapter of either Snow Drop or What Has Become, but what I have in mind here doesn't really fit into my plans for What Has Become – I could manage to fit it in, but that would require way too much retooling of the storyline I have planned. However, I seem to be getting pretty good at killing off the main character in my stories, and I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing. 

This story came to me all of a sudden, from the expansion of one particular line, and was quickly written in hopes that the idea wouldn't disappear from my mind, and to that end, has been purposely written as a series of snippets in time.

The story came about when I was thinking of Naruto's "It's the promise of a lifetime!" line, and it quickly turned into what you see here before you. At some point, it departed from that line, and turned into something else. I'm a firm believer in writing what comes to mind, not forcing something to be written, because when you begin to force your writing, it ceases to be natural. Because of that, there's a definite stream of consciousness to what I write and may not always seem congruous and instead a collection of snippets in time. It's what felt right for this story. Even the writing style is different from what I'm used to writing, compared to the other stories that I've got up on the site. Although, it does feel a bit like I Really Did, so maybe not. All that I can say is that my choices in the writing of this story are all deliberate. That is the intent of this story, and I hope you've enjoyed this not so orthodox offering of mine. I realize that I won't please everyone with this story, as there are quite a few holes, now that I think about it, but I will consider this a completed piece.

Start – 8/20/07

End – 8/21/07


End file.
